An expert exhibitor
The Robot Museum opened in November 2005 and has earned an excellent reputation for itself for its exhibitions and its popularization of robotics science education. It also helped the China Times organize the Super Robot 2006: Robot Dream Exposition Taiwan. The museum took charge of shuffling exhibits between Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung and Kaohsiung for the 130-day event, which ultimately attracted 500,000 visitors.
"Robot exhibitions are different from fossil exhibitions," says Pan. "You have to give the public a chance to interact with the robots. And when the jaw falls off a RoboRaptor while the kids are playing with it, you have to fix it immediately. The pressure's enormous."
Pan's co-sponsorship of exhibitions has allowed him to get acquainted with many people who share his interest in robots. Now that businesses know the museum exists, they often donate robots they've used in their exhibitions. Kuei Jung Exhibitions, for example, has donated a number of expensive robots, including a 120-centimeter-tall, NT$2.5-million security robot; a Gigantor that is hugely popular with fans of the Japanese comic and cartoon; and a Nuvo--one of 2005's best inventions according to Time magazine--manufactured by ZMP.
Gigantor, a bipedal robot with a small head and thick body, was originally the eponymous star of a 1956 Japanese manga created by Mitsuteru Yokoyama. Production of toy Gigantors was limited to 200 individually numbered units in Japan. Decked out in blue plastic, he exudes an energy that fans of the comic find utterly charming.
Nuvo, the first bipedal robot to enter the homes of ordinary people, is a star in its own right. It may be only 39 centimeters tall, but Nuvo--a homophone of the French word for "new" or "special"--is multitalented. It can walk, dance, speak, play music, give the time, and shake hands, and is also equipped with a wireless receiver that lets its owner use it to monitor what's going on around the house.
Many, many people contributed to the establishment of the Robot Museum, but the founders didn't have to start entirely from scratch. After all, Pan is himself a robotics researcher.
Pan began researching insectoid robots as early as 1999, and had soon started work on a six-legged robotic beetle. He designed mechanical structures, installed servomotors, developed motor controllers, put in microcontrollers and infrared sensors.... "The hard part was figuring out how to program the motor controllers in such a way that the robot would walk like a real bug," he recalls.
To that end, he made frequent excursions outside the lab to watch six-legged insects walk. The beetle he ultimately built could walk forwards and backwards, and make turns. It could also detect and avoid objects in its vicinity. With the addition of a radio controller and a camera to track a target, it could potentially carry out missions assigned to it by an operator.
"The Chinese translation of 'robot' is literally 'mechanical person," says Pan. "This inaccuracy is often misleading. The earliest industrial applications were simply mechanical arms that bore no resemblance to people." Pan says that people like humanoid robots because they're showy and can be made to perform. But bipedal robots aren't stable and often fall down on rough ground. Six-legged insectoid robots are far more stable and are therefore useful for a broader array of applications--for example, emergency relief work in the mountains or in the wake of an earthquake.
At a robotics study camp, children assemble simple robots themselves.